About the homepage

Good morning!

This is a technical non-chile related post, but I hope it could be useful for some of you anyway.

I've been thinking about how I can update my chile pepper homepage to newer standards. Or rather, the part of it that I call the Chile Pepper Database (http://petterssononline.com/habanero/peppers.php). I created that page 6-7 years ago, when learning to program with PHP using MySQL as a database. And I think it needs a fresher look. Also, I have been thinking about enabling it for mobile devices.

According to my Google statistics, traffic from "mobile" devices the last month are 8,78% of the total traffic. A conclusion I make from this report is that it's not (yet) very important to support mobile devices. But since the homepage needs a facelift anyway, I will have a look at it.

Current status
I have done zero maintenance on the page during the last couple of years. My ISP has upgraded both PHP and MySQL, so at least that could have caused malfunctioning, so it is somewhat surprising to see that it still works.

Although I tried to separate the PHP presentation logic from the "business" logic, I have to say that the code is tightly coupled. Making it impossible to add support for mobile devices. Or even to have a smooth transition to newer standards.

Parts of the solution is based on Object Oriented features, making quite a mess when blended with more traditional PHP programming.

So, what are my choices?
1) Extend the current code and make changes to support new devices.
2) Develop new code, and try to base it on the current database design. Add new functions to make the old homepage more attractive.
3) Develop a new site for mobile devices and stepwise migrate the old homepage to the new standard.

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Choice number one will result in an even bigger mess than today. So it is out of the question.

Choice number two will result in two different solutions. Making it hard to maintain and keep in sync between mobile and the "standard" homepage.

I think that choice number three will be my way forward. I will start working on a prototype for mobile devices and at the same time keep the "old" homepage in mind. This will hopefully result in some common elements between the two, and making the separation better.

I will continue writing on this subject as soon as I have made some decisions and even maybe something to show you.

In the meanwhile. It's Saturday morning, and I will go out and buy some soil today, to get some seeds started.

Wishing you a nice weekend!
   Mats